Coming to a Democracy Near You

Another book recommendation from my shelf...

This is not just a lament for his own nation, America, this is a warning for all nations, all democracies that become "chained to the flickering shadows of celebrity culture, the spectacle of the arena and the airwaves, the lies of advertising, the endless personal dramas, many of them completely fictional, that have become the staples of news, celebrity gossip, New Age mysticism, and pop psychology."

Fair warning, Canada, we are not immune. The world is about to become one very large corporate state. Indeed, it already is...

More from Chris Hedges' brilliant, unflinching examination of a mass culture that has relinquished thoughtfulness and truth for illusion and entertainment:

The rise of the corporate state has grave political consequences, as we saw in Italy and Germany in the early part of the twentieth century. Antitrust laws not only regulate and control the marketplace. They also serve as bulwarks to protect democracy. And now that they are gone, now that we have a state run by and on behalf of corporations, we must expect inevitable and terrifying consequences.

As the pressure mounts, as this despair and impoverishment reach into larger and larger segments of the populace, the mechanisms of corporate and government control are being bolstered to prevent civil unrest and instability. The emergence of the corporate state always means the emergence of the security state.

The more we sever ourselves from a literate, print-based world, a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas, for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans, celebrities, and a lust for violence, the more we are destined to implode.

This book reveals just how deep the rot goes, and how, in a very real sense, we are currently living in a frightening global dystopia, the "brave new world" that early 20th century thinkers and writers presaged all those decades ago.

We, individual human beings as well as individual communities and nations, lose the power to control our destinies when we relinquish our birthright to think freely and to examine clearly, to analyze and to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong.

I am thinking now of Orwell, Huxley, and others. I was very young when I first began reading dystopian literature, but for the most part I've held onto a healthy trust in humanity and remained optimistic for our collective future, believing that those totalitarian scenarios could or would never come to pass, not after the lessons learned from the World Wars and the Holocaust.

How naive. Hedges' books articulate and document what has been systematically playing out over the course of the last few decades, revving into high gear in the 80s, when our leaders were pushing NAFTA and Free Trade - our power has been slyly wrested from us, and all the while we have allowed ourselves to be dazzled and entertained...